Good News

Army Meets December Recruiting Goal . It's actually somewhat surprising that this made the news. There has been an awful lot of negative projections made by the press over the last year or two regarding the Army's recruiting. Being on the inside, I have mixed feelings about it. Part of me completely understands why they fall short, and why people don't want to join. On the other hand, I also know that the re-enlistment rate for people in combat arms has been the highest it's ever been. These are the people actually doing the fighting, and they are not only staying in but asking for more.
Could the Army do a better job of selling itself? Absolutely. People that serve in the Air Force for four years can come out with a lot of transferable knowledge and qualifications into the civilian world, whereas the Army... not so much. Granted the civilian world doesn't have a lot of "run up that hill and kill stuff" jobs (if it did, I would be golden), but there can still be some way of educating Army personel to better adapt to life after the military. And this goes beyond college courses available to soldiers. This has more to do with the training they receive. Take a regular Army medic, for example (91 whiskey, I believe); their training is a joke. You could theoretically spend 4 years as an Army medic and not even be EMT-Basic qualified. They have to be a part of a special operations unit to receive any kind of realistic training. This means that if they get out after their initial enlistment, they have zero civilian qualifications. Zip.
This is just one example, and to list more would just bore you. The point is, it's easy to see why the Army isn't very appealing in some regards. I am very thankful that there are people out there willing to raise their right hand, and am very glad that I did, but it's hard to argue with some of the downsides.